Iran: jailed academics must serve sentences
▶ Kylie Moore-Gilbert and Fariba Adelkhah face years in jail while Iran says it will not play ‘political games’
The Iranian authorities said jailed Australian-British academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert and French-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah will serve their full terms.
Dr Moore-Gilbert has been in custody in Iran for 14 months. The spying charge against her was not made public by the Iranian authorities until some time after she was sentenced to 10 years in September this year.
Ms Adelkhah’s arrest on espionage charges was confirmed in July. She is a specialist in Shiite Islam and a research director at Sciences Po University in France. The university said that both women began a hunger strike on December 24.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne called for Dr Moore-Gilbert to be treated “fairly, humanely and in accordance with international norms”.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said his country’s government “will not submit to political games and propaganda”.
“Like any other individual with a sentence, [Dr Moore-Gilbert] will serve her time while enjoying all legal rights,” he said.
Iran’s government confirmed Dr Moore-Gilbert’s arrest in September this year, although she has been detained since October 2018.
She was accused of “spying for another country”.
Mr Mousavi claimed Dr Moore-Gilbert was detained for “violating Iran’s national security” and her sentence had been issued in accordance with “all the related laws”.
He said that the Iranian authorities would not forget Australia’s treatment of Negar Ghodskani, an Iranian woman arrested two years ago over breaches of US sanctions against Iran.
Ms Ghodskani gave birth in custody in Australia before being extradited to the US, where she was sentenced under American law for sanctions offences. She was released in September and returned to Iran.
British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe received a five-year jail term in 2016 for spying; Dr Moore-Gilbert is facing twice that length of time.
The pair briefly met last week in Iran’s Evin Prison, Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s husband Richard said.
“Before the guards pulled them apart Nazanin was able to tell Kylie that the world is watching her story and it will be OK,” Mr Ratcliffe wrote on Twitter after a conversation with his wife.
The implication that the treatment of Dr Moore-Gilbert is in part a response to Ms Ghodskani’s case appears to be consistent with a retaliatory approach taken by the Iranian authorities, a suspicion supported by Iran’s recent release of a British-Australian citizen and her Australian partner seemingly in exchange for an Iranian citizen detained in Australia.
In early October, Pouyan Afshar, the lawyer representing Iranian scientist Reza Dehbashi Kivi, told he did “not doubt for a second” that his client’s release was linked to the freeing of Jolie King and Mark Firkin by the Iranian authorities.
Mr Kivi was doing research at the University of Queensland when he was detained 15 months ago by the Australian authorities. His release and return to Iran came despite the US asking for him to be extradited to face charges of conspiring to export American-made electronic military devices to Iran.
Before their release, Ms King and Mr Firkin, had been held for three months for allegedly flying a drone near a military site in Tehran.
Ms Payne told Australian broadcaster SBS that the ongoing detention of Dr Moore-Gilbert is “a matter of deep concern to the government”.
“I have communicated with my Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister [Javad] Zarif, many times about this case, including through face-toface meetings,” she said.
Dr Moore-Gilbert is an Islamic
Studies academic at the University of Melbourne. She has published works on authoritarianism in the Muslim world and on the Arab uprisings in 2011.
Her articles include a 2015 review of the book The Arab Gulf States and Reform in the Middle East: Between Iran and the ‘Arab Spring’.
She completed a Bachelor of Arts with first-class honours in Middle Eastern Studies and a master’s at Cambridge University in 2013, and her doctorate at the University of Melbourne.
She has since worked at Monash University and the University of Melbourne.